Walk to and visit London Eye. Expensive, but should provide a good
view.

Go home happy, with a greater appreciation for British history and
culture. (Priceless.)

1045 BST 22 September 2006

Art exhibit at Gloucester Road station: City Glow, Mountain Whisper.
Advertised all over town along Underground escalators.

City Glow, Mountain Whisper at Gloucester Road Station

1545 BST 23 September 2006

Now on board G-YMMB, in seat 36K, three rows from the very back of the
plane. Kiesa and I managed to get seats next to each other, and the
frumpy woman who sat in our aisle seat on the way out is on this plane.
But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Friday morning, I headed out to buy granola and coffee for breakfast,
from the nearby mini-Tesco and Starbucks. In the elevator going back up,
I made two American Airlines flight attendants jealous of my coffee.
This hotel seems to be a designated crew rest hotel; I've seen more
American Airlines crew here than I've seen in any one place before,
airports included.

Holiday Inn, Kensington Forum

We headed again to Southwark, this time London Bridge station, and
walked to the Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum. We weren't really inclined
to pay £4 each to enter, so we hit the gift shop (which was less
outfitted than I expected) and ended up with some interesting-sounding
tea.

Next was the Tate Modern, a short walk away, inconsiderately not near any
tube stops. It didn't start raining seriously until I was in the museum.
Kiesa didn't feel inclined to stick around and see the fantastically
bizarre displays of the self-proclaimed "art", so she headed to
Piccadilly Circus for shopping, with a designated rendezvous time of
1330.

I saw all of the free galleries in the two hours alloted, although I
didn't study much of the art in detail. My favorites were the
photography and the less-abstract sculptures. One exhibit featured four
screens displaying musical scenes from movies, stitched together to form
some sort of concert. All of the art was created explicitly to be art,
even if it was inspired by comic books (I forget the painting) or
everyday objects (Andy Warhol's Pop Art).

After rendezvousing with Kiesa, we ate lunch (pre-packaged sandwiches,
ubiquitous in the UK) and headed out for our next adventure. It was still
drizzling, ad definitely overcast, so we scrubbed plans to visit Hampton
Court Gardens Maze and headed instead to the Imperial War Museum,
featuring exhibits from the past century of warfare. Most of the
artifacts were Royal Army, but the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were
also represented. The basement held exhibits from World War I and II,
and other conflicts since then. The spy and special forces exhibit
upstairs was also interesting.

The sun came out by the time we left the museum. Had we been paying
enough attention, we could have left the museum a bit earlier and
gotten to the Maze. Instead, we walked to the London Eye (known to some
as the "London Eyesore") and I tried to figure out if being that high
without anything visibly solid in front of me would freak me out. After
some contemplation, I decided it would be ok, so we queued for
£13.50 tickets, each, queued to enter, had our bags
pseudo-searched, queued a bit more, and finally entered the
slowly-rotating capsule, which took us high above the Thames, giving a
great view of this section of London, especially the Shell building next
door.

London Eye

After our "flight", we searched for dinner options and headed to SoHo,
seeking out the Thai restaurant we didn't make it to on Sunday. When we
got there, the menu didn't look inspiring, so we headed back to a few
interesting restaurants we passed and ended up in Hummus Bros, a "humus
bar", which serves humus, eaten by hand with pitas, with various
toppings in the middle. It was quite good.

On the way back home, we stopped by Starbucks (which is quite popular in
London), where Kiesa had hot chocolate and I had a decaf mocha, and
drank it on the street overlooking a casino styling itself "Las Vegas",
next to a very subdued art deco building -- no gleam, just one color of
stone.

We headed back to the hotel and prepared to leave, although we didn't
actually pack until the morning.